Members of the Benton-Carroll-Salem school board are unanimous in their opinion a new school building would be an investment in the future and have decided again to ask voters for approval of a bond issue to finance it.

After discussing the matter during its Nov. 22 meeting, the board decided it will place a bond issue on the May 2017 ballot. If approved by voters, a new K-7 building would be constructed on land the district owns west of the Oak Harbor High School on State Route 163. It would replace the current Oak Harbor Middle School, which houses grades four through seven, and the R.C. Waters Elementary School, which houses kindergarten through third grades. The buildings were constructed in 1911 and 1956 respectively.

On Nov. 12, a total of 46 participants fired in the first Garand & Modern Military Match ever conducted on the new Petrarca Range targets located at the Camp Perry National Guard Training Facility – home of the National Matches. The targets, installed during the summer of 2016, feature state-of-the-art technology and remove the need for pit duty while also providing other innovative qualities designed for competitors.

Winning the overall Garand Match was Jeffrey Cramer, 62, of Poland, Ohio, after firing a score of 272-5x. Following close in second was Michael Dunfee, 42, of Oak Harbor, who dropped just one point behind Cramer with a score of 271-6x. James Root, 42, of Lasalle, Michigan, recorded a score of 270-10x to land in third.

Overtaking the Modern Military Match was Gregory Wilkins, 56, of Findlay, with an impressive score of 292-9x – nearly 10 points more than the second place competitor. Charles Reynolds, 71, of Three Rivers, Michigan, fired a score of 283-8x, just above Daniel Lapp, 55, of Strongsville, who managed 283-1x to earn a third place finish.

Research at Stone Lab, The Ohio State University’s island campus on Lake Erie, has determined that some commercially available filter pitchers are able to remove microcystin, the main toxin produced by harmful algal blooms (HABs), from tap water.

Funded by the Ohio Lake Erie Commission’s Lake Erie Protection Fund and inspired by a question research coordinator Dr. Justin Chaffin heard a lot at outreach events, the study showed that the biggest predictor of whether a pitcher filter will remove microcystin from water is how long it takes that water to percolate through the filter.

Pitcher filters, such as those made by Brita, Pur, or Zero Water – the brands used in the study – use activated carbon which does the heavy lifting in removing contaminants from water. Molecules like chlorine and microcystin stick to the carbon particles, while water molecules travel through the filter and into the pitcher.

In the aftermath of the 2014 harmful algal bloom (HAB) in Lake Erie, which left residents in the city of Toledo without drinking water, there’s been a lot of activity around making sure something similar doesn’t happen again.

Water treatment plants have added additional testing for the algal toxin microcystin that caused Toledo’s water shutdown, scientists are monitoring HABs as they develop, and backup intakes let larger plants avoid pulling in potentially contaminated water altogether.

But remembering the news reports of people stuck without water for days, some concerned citizens may still wonder “what if?”